Thread by @HistoryKE

#HistoryKeThread: The Man Who Refused To Die

In February of 1987, Kenya’s Environment Minister, Jeremiah Nyaga, was visiting Scandinavia.

Addressing officials, he said: “It is better for Koigi (pictured) to be incarcerated in a Kenyan prison than for him to face an uncertain future in Norway...”

A few weeks back, dissident Koigi Wamwere had fled to Norway, having sneaked out of Kenya via Busia border point.

After consulting Oslo, Norwegian diplomats in Kampala agreed to grant the former Nakuru North Constituency Member of Parliament asylum in the Scandinavian country.

Later that year, in September, Koigi learnt to his horror that President Moi was set to make an official visit to a number of Scandinavian countries, Norway among them.

Ahead of the visit, the Foreign Affairs PS at the time, Bethuel Kiplagat (pictured), appeared to wage a not-so-diplomatic campaign to stop Norwegian media houses from criticizing Moi’s government.

The mistake that Kiplagat seemed to make was that he bypassed normal diplomatic channels to pass on his message. Rather than go via the accredited ambassador, he made demands on the Norwegian government through a certain Kenyan resident in that country called Sammy Korir.

The Norwegian government protested Kenya’s “backdoor diplomacy”. The government had no powers to muzzle the press, an official statement read. Neither could it direct the Fourth Estate in that country on what to write, or not to write.

Meanwhile, there were protests outside the Kenyan mission in Oslo against the planned Moi visit by crowds of Norwegians sympathetic towards Koigi.

The Kenyan government abandoned Korir.

And as September drew near, Norwegian political leaders decided to give the State Dinner during Moi’s visit a wide berth.

No, we did not invite President Moi to Norway, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry clarified. It was Moi who asked to visit, they said.

In (doubtless) solidarity with Norway, both Denmark and Sweden also politely declined to play host to Moi.

But Finland (and Romania) saw no problem. The two countries went on to roll out the red carpet for the Kenyan President.

What Koigi - seen here with his wife Nduta in 1984 - hadn’t realized was that by orchestrating a multinational snub of the Kenyan leader, he had stirred a hornet’s nest.

Moi and state security agents were determined to teach Koigi a lesson.

In September of 1988, Koigi received a call from a man who introduced himself as Archbishop Byrum Makokha, Head of the Church of God Ministry in Kenya.

Byrum explained that he was in Oslo to seek political asylum. He needed Koigi’s counsel and assistance. The two agreed to meet at the Oslo railway station.

Over a period of several weeks, Koigi and Byrum spent lots of time together. Their friendship grew close. Koigi encouraged the Bishop to find courage to speak with the local BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) bureau at Oslo regarding his asylum application.

After some bit of convincing, Makokha gave two interviews in both English and Swahili to the BBC.

The following evening, a BBC executive, sounding disturbed, telephoned Koigi.

“Do you know Bishop Byrum Makokha well”?

“Well, we just met recently”, Koigi replied.

“The real Bishop Byrum Makokha has called us from Kenya complaining that the interview we aired in our Swahili broadcast was a fraud! Luckily, he phoned us before we could air the English one....”

When both Koigi and the BBC officials eventually managed to smoke out the impostor from his Red Cross Asylum centre in Norway, they demanded to know who he was, and what his real mission was.

He confessed that he was an agent who had been sent to kidnap Koigi. He had travelled from London, where he worked for a certain Mr. Ward, to Oslo to lay plans to kidnap the Kenyan. For that mission, he had been promised a reward of KES 3 million, a handsome sum in those days.

Pleading for forgiveness, fearing that he would be handed over to Norwegian police, the fake Bishop retrieved a notebook which he claimed contained names of his Kenyan contacts.

In the book were phone contacts and addresses of the Commandant of the Presidential Guard at the time, Elijah Sumbeiywo, Aide de Camp Wilson Boinett, Mr. Serem, who was listed as the Coast Provincial Police Officer, a Mr. Njeru of the Special Branch, among others.

It is not clear to me what became of the impostor. He was picked up by Norwegian law enforcers for further questioning.

When Koigi a few days later visited London, he was met at his hotel by an officer from Scotland Yard.

“We have information that you are on Moi’s hit-list”, he cautioned Koigi. “We don’t want political blood on our streets”, he added, before handing over a list of phone numbers.

The phone contacts were to be used if he felt he was being trailed, or if he felt his life was at risk.

One evening Koigi returned to his hotel in London. He found someone had left him a note.

“I came round to see you but you were not in. Yours, C. Ward”, the handwritten note read.

Koigi recalled that the fake Bishop had mentioned that he worked for a certain Mr. Ward. Koigi immediately realized, to his horror, that he was being trailed.

Shortly afterwards, he returned to Norway.

It wasn’t long before a man who had been sent to assassinate him, and who went by the name of “Kibily Tall”, was arrested and charged for being in illegal possession of firearms.

By his own confession, he had been sent by “the Kenya government” to kill Koigi. Tall was to meet two Kenyans of Somali origin at a train station. He hadn’t met them before. But the instructions were that it was up to him to identify them.

But as luck would have it for Koigi, Tall gave himself away when he approached and spoke with the wrong duo.

If indeed there was such a plot to kill Koigi, then the Kenyan government must have thought of Koigi to have the proverbial nine lives of a cat.

In September of 1990, Koigi rather naively decided to pay a visit to his cousin, Kuria wa Kariuki, who was based in Uganda.

Koigi, an unidentified friend of his and his cousin met one afternoon at a social joint on the Ugandan side of Busia. As they tossed down drinks, Koigi noticed that a group of men and women who looked like Kenyans threw “sly looks” in his direction.

“Who do you think those guys are?”

“They could be border security agents” was the reply from his friend.

That very night, as he lay in bed reading, he heard the key on his door turn. Before he could react, the door was thrown open and five hooded men pounced at and overpowered him.

Something was violently forced on his face. It was placed over his mouth. Everything turned black.

When he came to, Koigi found himself in unfamiliar surroundings. He was naked and lying down in a filthy cell.

An officer walked up to his sprawled body.

Looking down at the prized state guest, the officer said: “Welcome home, Mr. Wamwere”.

Koigi was the newest state guest at Nyayo House.

Koigi endured weeks of psychological torture in the hands of the police. He was subjected to long hours in dark cells while naked. Indeed, as he once wrote, there were no days during his incarceration: just one long night everyday.

He was asked about his alleged plot to topple the government. Agents demanded to know where he had hidden guns given to him “by Russia and Libya” (seemed deliberate for state to associate Koigi’s alleged subversive activities with countries that had fallen out with the west).

Agents also questioned him over his alleged ties with President Museveni. They also demanded to know what he was up to in Europe, and also about his associations. They accused him of having formed a cabinet in exile, and demanded to know which individuals were in that cabinet.

When the state officers didn’t like the answers Koigi gave, they handcuffed and blindfolded him before leading him to some filthy waterlogged cell.

The state of some cells was particularly worse than that of others. On some occasions, he declined to be thrown into a cell he considered extremely filthy.

“Take me to the other one”, he implored the officers. Not that the “other one” offered comforts of any kind, but he could cope better there.

The cold water in the cells made him shiver. When he demanded clothing and food, they mocked him, at times claiming that they were giving him the best training they could to a guerilla fighter; that even Mau Mau guerillas survived on less food, and no toilets.

Meanwhile, the State was busy drawing up the charges.

Koigi maintains that he was abducted in Uganda. The official position of the Kenyan government was that he was caught with a bag containing ten Russian AK-47s, several Chinese hand grenades and various models of pistols.

In October of 1990, defended by among others lawyer Jeff Shamalla, Koigi and Rumba Kinuthia, Mirugi Kariuki, Geoffrey Kuria Kariuki, Andrew Mureithi Ndirangu, Harun Wasaba and James Gitau Mwara were finally escorted to court under heavy guard and charged with treason.

This was an offense that carried a mandatory death penalty.

In rallies, President Moi accused the Norwegian government of harboring a criminal who wanted to cause chaos and overthrow the “democratically elected government of the people of Kenya....”

Wilson Ndolo Ayah, at the time Kenya’s Foreign Affairs Minister, gave the Norwegian embassy and its staffers seven days to close down the mission and leave the country.

Throughout the trial, Koigi and his co-accused were in detention for two years. During that time, one of Koigi’s listed witnesses, who had been tortured, was killed “after grabbing a G-3 rifle, uzi sub-machine gun and three pistols from a policeman”.

And as the clamour for pluralism gained momentum the Attorney General entered a nolle prosequi on the treason case.

There are not many Kenyans alive today who have paid a price for modern liberties as heavily as Koigi has.

He is not just a former MP, former Asst. Minister and past presidential contender; he is, alongside the likes of Raila Odinga and James Orengo among Kenya’s most “experienced” political detainees, having endured detention by both the Mzee Kenyatta and Moi administrations.

His aptly named biography, “I Refuse To Die: My Journey For Freedom”, from whose pages I have shared much on the man’s tribulations, is the legacy of a relentlessly brave man.

Born in 1949 in Nakuru, Koigi earned a scholarship in the 1970s to study Hotel Management at Cornell university in the United States.

He did not finish his studies there. He thereafter returned to Kenya and had stints as a lecturer at a private college. He also served as a freelance journalist with a newspaper, Sunday Post.

After losing the Nakuru North parliamentary seat (Subukia today) to fiery politician Kihika Kimani, he wrote an article that was critical of Mzee Kenyatta in 1974 and was thrown into detention.

When Mzee Kenyatta died in 1978, Koigi was among detainees that President Moi released. During the 1979 polls, he won the Nakuru North seat.

In Parliament, Koigi was among a few radical MPs that Charles Njonjo nicknamed “the seven bearded sisters”. Others were Lawrence Sifuna, James Orengo, Mwashengu wa Mwachofi, Abuya Abuya, George Anyona and Chelagat Mutai.

In the last elections, Koigi lost the Jubilee primaries for the Nakuru Senatorial seat and sensationally decamped to NASA. Ironically, he lost the Nakuru Senator seat to Susan Kihika, the daughter of Kihika Kimani, his former rival.

One photo credit: hivisasa[.]com (the irony 🤔).

Correction: Actually, he was accused of grabbing the firearms from a number of policemen, not one.

Correction: Andrew Wakaba, not Andrew Wasaba*

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